From Silence
by viirus
Summary: It has been said that suffering builds character and that a hero cannot grow without first facing multiple opposing adversities. If a hero decides to ignore them, then he isn't much of a hero at all because he is therefore a coward. But what's there to be said about a hero who doesn't feel enough to do either? Harry is eight years old when he first stops feeling. - [ Dark!Harry ]


**GENERAL WARNING** : There will be brief mentions of **non-consensual content** , probably not heavy or explicit enough to warrant an M rating, but enough that I've rated this story M _just in case_. There _might_ be some **presage to pre-slash** as well, but this story isn't romance centric, so don't expect much.

 **NOTE** : This chapter has a drabble-ish feel to it and isn't really in chronological order, that will change. This chapter is more of an introduction and me trying to familiarize myself with this Harry's characterization, _sweats_ , I'm very am nervous. Feedback is welcome- _**wanted**_ , cue nervous— _borderline hysterical_ —laughter.

* * *

 **FROM SILENCE — FORWARD**  
 _from the cupboard under the stairs_

* * *

Once there had been a time where I believed myself special. I was a child, I was naive, and I was still mostly untouched by the darkness that plagues me now. I was a good child, Aunt Petunia did not dislike me and frequently told me she loved the color my eyes—the eyes of her deceased sister.

 _Your eyes are beautiful_ , she would whisper this to me each night before bed and I would feel loved.

The fat man did not like me even though his wife was fond of me, I knew this and did not care even though I should have. I was there the night he first laid his hands on Aunt Petunia and that night Aunt Petunia stopped calling my eyes beautiful. _Ugly_ , she spat, _no different from your whore mother_ , and though her words were spiteful, her eyes were not. That was enough for me and I would not hate her— _could not_ hate her. I was three.

Once there had been a time where Dudley called me Harry. I would call him Dudley and he would not spit at me for doing so. We were cousins and I might have considered him my friend. He might have even felt the same. The fat man did not like our budding friendship and strongly believed that our closeness was only due to my freakish manipulations.

One night the fat man pushed me into the cupboard under the stairs and had a long talk with Dudley. He told me that the cupboard was to be my new room and the next morning Dudley no longer addressed me with friendly terms. _Mum is mine, you cannot have her,_ his eyes were glazed over and filled with the same loathing his father stared at me with and I would say nothing because I was a coward and later when I told myself it didn't matter, it actually did. I was four.

Once there had been a time where I felt too much and hurt too much and I would consider myself strong, but know deep down that I was truly a coward. Once there had been a time where I had something precious and I was happy with that one something because it was the only thing keeping me together. Then I would loose that something, be left with nothing, and still feel _everything_. I was scared, I was hurting, I was suffocating on the feeling of feeling too much and I wanted- _needed_ it to stop. I was eight.

* * *

 _My name is Harry I am eight years old. I feel nothing._

* * *

 **FROM SILENCE — CHAPTER ONE**  
 _from the surface above the rabbit hole_

* * *

She is a grass snake, her name is Phaya, and though she isn't really _that_ beautiful she tells everyone she is. She is an oddity and she has already lost count how many times the other snakes have commented on the fact she probably hatched backwards or upside down. She feels too much and acts out too much and most snakes avoid her because even if she isn't particularly dangerous, she is terribly _terribly_ annoying and extremely _extremely_ unpredictable.

Grass snakes are not venomous and most other snakes find them unworthy because their only line of defense is feigning death and regurgitating the contents of their stomaches when they are unsurprisingly caught. Phaya, however, is too feisty for a grass snake and has defended herself multiple times just by hissing out profanities and spraying her predators with fluid produced from her anal glands. In other words, she would literally take a shit on anyone who tried to fuck with her and gross them out enough that they'd eventually learn to just leave her alone.

The first time she meets her human, she is hunting near an empty human park, slithering along the edge of a pond. She senses him before he even notices her and when she looks up, ready to hiss profanities at the human who dare approach her, she pauses mid-hiss when the scent of magic hits her tongue. Vaguely interested, she slithers over towards the boy and inwardly gloats at the lovely smell of his fear when he finally does notice her.

"§That's right you stupid human, fear me as I am your superior!§" She hisses. The hatchling, because he isn't old enough to be considered anything else, stares at her oddly and she hisses menacingly until he stops.

"§I didn't know snakes could talk,§" he whispers to himself and Phaya lifts her torso from the ground and tilts her head in a creepily human-like manner.

"§I do not _talk_ , the human tongue is much too plebeian for a creature of my status. You on the other hand, know the tongue of _my_ species.§" She scoffs and turns her head away from the hatchling, "§hmph, I suppose I can grant you the permission to speak to me, if you _insist_.§"

The hatchling gives her a shy lopsided smile that Phaya grudgingly finds quite cute—for a human. She then gives him the once-over, eyes trailing over his pale skin and his gravity defying jet black hair. She pauses her examination when his bright green eyes lock onto her own, and watches in silent amusement as he darts his eyes away from hers. He isn't unattractive and even if Phaya doesn't quite understand the difference between attractive and unattractive pertaining human appearances, she deems the hatchling in front of her worthy if only because he can apparently speak and understand her tongue.

"§Does that mean you will be my friend?§" He asks hesitantly and Phaya isn't really sure how to respond because while she wants to tell the hatchling that she, a superior snake, would never befriend a lowly human, (wizard or not) she also feels marginally awkward staring into the wide-eyed, _hopeful_ look he uses against her. This, she figures, must be how humans feel when those four legged mutts beg them for food.

"§I am the great Phaya, I do not need friends,§" she replies, and then quickly adds, "§but I would not complain if you were to occasionally bask in my presence. It might even do you some good.§" The smile she receives in return is almost blinding.

This hatchling, she decides, would make a nice pet.

"§My name is Harry, it's a pleasure to meet you Phaya,§" the one called Harry replies cheerfully.

"§Hm, it's not too unpleasant meeting you as well,§" Phaya retorts. Harry's smile widens and then quickly disappears.

"§I have to go now Phaya, I might get in trouble if I don't return soon.§" He glances around nervously as though expecting someone to be watching him and then sets his nervous gaze back on her, "§i-if I come back, you won't mind right?§"

"§I would not be displeased by your company,§" Phaya answers simply, feeling rather exasperated at the child's expectant stare.

"§I'll come visit you tomorrow then, um… is that okay?§" Harry asks.

"§Well if you wish to see me that badly, then I suppose so,§" Phaya replies haughtily. Harry grins and after a final wave, he runs off into the setting sun. Phaya just barely refrains from rolling her eyes at the clique of it all, and slithers back onto the edge of the pond. Tonight, she decided, she would catch herself a nice fat frog. She deserves it. Humans are stupid.

 **\- o -**

Phaya is a grass snake, she scares the other snakes away with her fierceness (annoyingness) and looks down on everyone because she believes herself better than everyone else. She's cares very little about what others think of her and constantly disregards the food chain because she isn't a prey, she is a predator. A few years after her first meeting with her human, she comes to the sudden realization that she doesn't actually think of her human as stupid anymore. She is familiar with the young human's habits, she is familiar with his fears, she is familiar with his dreams, and she isn't really sure how she feels about what she finds.

Harry is not a particularly interesting child. He is very small, appears to be very weak willed, and borderlines pathetic. Had that been all he was, Phaya wouldn't have approached him at all, but Harry had smelled of magic and something vaguely comforting and she hadn't been able to stop herself that day when she first approached him. It's been a few years and she has finally _noticed_.

Of course there were signs, his unhealthy stature, the alarmingly negative way he viewed himself, and the occasional mention of a fat cousin who liked to trip him down the stairs and was never punished for doing so. It was odd, but she didn't really get the whole child neglect and verbal abuse thing because she was a snake and snakes were independent at birth. She hadn't thought it was all that normal, but it hardly seemed all that bad either. If anything, she generally wrote it off as a human thing, except that she hadn't ever hearing of humans who physically attacked their young and her five year old human is hunched over her, his baggy t-shirt doing very little to hide the fist-sized bruises.

"§What is that?§" She hisses angrily and Harry is quick to pull up his shirt, but the damage has already been done.

"§I-I fell down the stairs,§" he replies and Phaya seethes because she can smell the lies and she tells him so.

"§Uncle Vernon was really _really_ mad,§" he says after a beat of silence and then he tells her about the test he got better marks on than his cousin. How Vernon told everyone he'd cheated, that the man went all the way to Harry's teacher _personally_ and told the woman that he was a cheater. How angry all of the adults were because no one really wanted to believe the word of a child, and how afterward Vernon hit him (repeatedly) and then told him not to tell anyone and to stop thinking himself better than his Dudley.

After another beat of silence, Phaya roars. That fat lard of animal dung thinks he can lay his hands on _her_ human?! That obese lard of trash thinks that _his_ primitive brainless walrus is smarter than _her_ Harry?! That miserable execrable subhuman thinks he can get away with it?! Thinks that _she_ will stand for this?! Doesn't matter at all that the man- no that **_oaf_** , because he sure as hell isn't a man, doesn't know who she is because she knows him and she… she… she…

she isn't actually venomous.

"§It's okay,§" her human whispers, his eyes wide and fearful. He isn't afraid of her, but he's definitely afraid for her. He knows it too, she realizes, that there isn't actually anything she can do for him. For once, Phaya feels less than she is because for all that she prides herself in being at the top of her metaphorical food chain, she isn't actually all that dangerous when it comes to humans.

"§It's okay,§" he repeats soothingly, but it's not and Phaya isn't sure how to make him see just how wrong it is.

 **\- o -**

Five year old Harry couldn't say he was a particularly happy child because he often found himself suffocated by the terrible heavy feeling of _un_ happiness. Feelings and emotions were unpleasant and there wasn't any way he could know that it wasn't actually normal for a child his age to hear the word feel and react the same way one would react to having heard their beloved pet dog had been run over by their father's car. Then Vernon told Harry he was going to go to Primary school.

Originally, Harry wasn't actually even going to go to school, but then the woman who had once babysat him had asked about Harry's schooling and Vernon hadn't wanted to admit that he hadn't been planning on letting Harry receive an education, so Harry was going to Primary school.

His teacher was a nice, but strict woman and Harry didn't like or dislike her because he didn't really know anything about her. Then she started looking upon him with suspicion and Harry stopped thinking about her at all. He wasn't the kind to hold grudges, there were very few things he truly disliked and anyone stupid enough to be manipulated by Vernon Dursley was hardly worth Harry's anything.

It only took a few days for Dudley to create something of a caste system within their class. He made fast friends with the rather mean boy's and quickly made it known that he was not someone to be messed with because he was noticeably bigger and could ( _would_ ) beat your face in. Anyone acquainted with Dudley would get a pass and anyone Dudley disliked would become something akin to the class pariah. Unsurprisingly, that pariah was him.

Harry was a quiet child by nature, he didn't voluntarily answer any questions the teacher asked even when he knew the answer and he didn't interact with any of the other children because he didn't really know how to. The other children thought of him as strange and Harry didn't really mind because he already had a best friend and, even if she was just a snake, she was his just as he was hers. Then a few weeks into the year, a new boy joined their classroom and introduced himself as Owen.

"Hello, I am Owen," he had said to Harry when he noticed Harry sitting by himself. Harry had blinked a few times before responding and all the other children watched with shifty eyes as Dudley and his gang watched them.

The next day Owen sat next to Harry again and even stayed by his side during recess. He never noticed the restlessness he was causing amongst the rest of the class and Harry wasn't actually sure if he was supposed to point it out or not. He didn't. He probably should have.

The rest of the week Owen trailed after Harry with a shy smile and Harry learned that Owen had an older brother and liked to read more than he liked playing video games. He learned that Owen's brother wasn't very nice, that he was a lot like Dudley, and that he wanted to be Harry's friend. Happily, Harry agreed to being Owen's friend and ignored the unpleasant feeling he got whenever he noted Dudley and his friends staring at them.

A few weeks into their friendship, Owen disappeared during recess and skipped school the next day. Dudley and his friends smiled and Harry didn't know what to do to get rid of the dread that filled him.

The next day, when Owen showed up at school with a swollen lip and a black eye, he didn't sit next to Harry. Dudley and his friends laughed and none of the adults seemed to notice Owen's sudden change in friends. Dred turned to terror when the day after Owen started ignoring him, he began sitting with Dudley.

"Hey Owen, do you want to play Harry hunting?"  
There was little hesitation when Owen said okay.

Once again Harry sat by himself, no one daring to take the seat beside him. Owen didn't appear to even remember that they had once been friends, he no longer hesitated to help the other boy's hold Harry down while Dudley kicked him. It didn't take long for Harry to accept things as it was, but even with the acceptance, Harry still felt the anguish every time they met eyes and Owen's were filled with nothing but contempt.

Feelings were horrible, Harry wished he felt nothing at all.

 **\- o -**

A six year old Harry, decidedly doesn't like to think of himself as abused despite how many times Phaya says otherwise. They have gotten into enough uncharacteristically tense conversations that Harry has learned that the topic itself is something of a taboo subject. Harry isn't a very confrontational person by nature and dislikes causing his important people problems even more than he dislikes controversy. It is therefore, unsurprising that he often becomes irrationally defensive whenever the topic comes up.

Vernon Dursley had a temper, a lot of people knew it, but even so he'd never actually left obvious marks on Harry whenever he physically attacked him. Marjorie Dursley apparently didn't know this and when she missed her intended target (Harry's shins) and whacked Harry in the face with her walking stick, she didn't bother mentioning it to anyone since nobody really noticed. The next morning when Harry woke with a sore face, he didn't think much of it even though he should have. Harry wasn't a particular good liar, but he had always been very careful when it came to hiding the more obvious signs. It was just an unlucky coincidence that he not only kept his bangs excessively long, but that he also wasn't vain enough to give his reflection anymore than a quick once over when he checked his appearance in the mirror each morning.

Imagine his surprise when a gentle gust of wind brushes his bangs away from his face to reveal a dark purple bruise on his cheekbone just beneath his right eye. Imagine his even bigger surprise when someone actually notices.

"Harry how- how did you get that bruise on your face?" His teacher asks with soft, slow voice.

"I… ran into... into a… a door."  
Harry had never considered himself a particularly good liar.

"Mr. Dursley, I am calling about your nephew. He came to school today with a rather large bruise on his face and-"  
He was also jaded enough that he no longer considered himself a particularly hopeful child.

He really shouldn't have been surprised when his teacher decided to call Vernon directly about the bruises instead of informing police.

 _"_ _Harry what happen to your arm?"_

 _"_ _I feel out of a tree."_

 _"_ _Oh, well you should really be more careful next time."_

 _ **Smile smile Harry, they're watching you**._

 _"Yes of course, it was my own fault really."_

 _"Ha-ha, how grown up of you to take such responsibility."_

Harry had never been a particularly good liar, but that didn't mean he'd never become one.

 **\- o -**

Phaya the grass snake often admits to herself that had Harry not smelt the way he had, she probably wouldn't have even bothered with him.

"§Hey Phaya, what do I smell like to you?§" He asks while they lay silently in the sun.

"§Fear,§" Phaya answers immediately, "§you smell of fear, cobwebs, and magic.§"

"§Magic?§"

"§Are you deaf?§"

"§Uncle Vernon says there's no such thing as magic.§"

"§Uncle Vernon is a pig.§"

Harry snickers and Phaya pretends not to like it.

"§Seize your snickering child, you sound like a cow.§"

"§No I don't!§" He chokes out between giggles. The subject is efficiently dropped then, but Harry never forgets.

A week later when his teacher's wig turns blue after she unfairly calls Harry out during class, Harry begins to wonder. Phaya says he smells of magic and Uncle Vernon always automatically assumes everything to be his fault whenever something unexplainable happens.

"There's no such thing as magic!" Vernon always shouts at him and Petunia verbally agrees, but her eyes stare knives into Harry's so maybe…?

' _Eleven_ ,' Petunia mouths at him and Harry isn't sure what she means, but keeps it in mind anyways.

"§You're probably related to one of those stick waving lunatics,§" Phaya answers when he breeches the subject.

"§They call themselves wizards and think themselves above _everyone_. Pompous fucking assholes,§" she mumbles as though she doesn't think the same about herself. "§Supposedly, there is a magical school called Pig Warts or something. If you are one of them you'll probably get a letter when you turn eleven or so I've heard. I don't actually keep track of what those people do. Did you know they believe all snakes to be evil? No respect at all those fucking barbarians.§"

 _Eleven huh?_

On the morning after Halloween, when Petunia Dursley had opened her door to get the morning mail and instead discovered a bundled baby on her doormat, she had _known_. Her dear baby sister Lily was dead and it was all because of those- those freaks. For a long minute she had stood there, staring down at the sleeping child, trembling with grief and fury. This child was undoubtably going to be just like her—one of those _freaks_. She had been completely ready to loathe the child. It would be easy to hate him because he was alive while Lily— _her_ _baby sister_ —wasn't and Petunia **_loved_** her no matter how many horrible things she had said in the past. Then he'd opened his eyes and stared at her with those impossibly large bright green eyes, _Lily's eyes_ , and she just couldn't.

She hadn't hesitated when she first lifted the child into her arms and hadn't looked away even when her vision began to blur and her eyes began to sting. This child had her eyes. He didn't deserve them- he didn't… he didn't deserve them. No no no no no- and then he looked up with her with that stupidly cute, toothless smile and Petunia had just melted. This child was her sister's, but on that day he became hers too and nothing was going to keep her from loving him, **nothing** …

…except Vernon happened.

"He's bewitched you with his freakiness pet," Vernon cooed softly while he caressed the bruised cheek he had just slapped.

 _Don't fall for his charms_ , he said. _You of all people should know better_ , he said, and maybe that was true but Petunia couldn't find it in herself to care. Maybe the child was bewitching her with that freakiness and with Lily's- with **_his_** , big green eyes, but it didn't matter because he mattered to her. It was her own fault really, she had been the one to egg Vernon on with her constant talk about how freakish and abnormal her sister was. This was her punishment and she'd take it because she probably deserved it.

"It's okay," the green eyed child had whispered later after Vernon had left, "if you hate me… it's okay. It's better this way right? …because otherwise Vernon will hurt you." _God why was this child so_ \- Petunia let out a choked sob and vigorously shook her head, she didn't think- couldn't possibly ever, find it in herself to hate him because he was such a sweet _sweet_ little thing and how could anyone possibly hate him? Dudley may have been her child, but Vernon had shaped the boy into a shadow of himself. Harry though, Harry was _hers_ and now she didn't even have that.

For years she watched, forced herself to watch, never ever turned her head to look away, and it had **_hurt_**. God how it hurt to watch her sweet little boy slowly fold in on himself and slowly become less than he was because if he was anything more he'd be punished for it. It wasn't right, _it wasn't fair_ , but it was just for a few more years. He would survive because he was her strong little boy and then the frea- the wizards would take him away where he'd be safe and far away from Vernon. That world was the one that took her sister away from her, it was a horrible _horrible_ place and even if Petunia loved her nephew she didn't think she could ever find it in herself to forgive _those people_.

Even so, if he was there he'd be away from here and there couldn't be any worse than here could it?

The answer would be yes, but Petunia wouldn't know this and Harry wouldn't be able to feel enough to know the difference.

 **\- o -**

Once Upon a time, there was a Boy-Who-Lived, in this Boy-Who-Lived there was another boy named Harry, and in that boy named Harry there lived a scared child called Freak. Together they made up a hero. Except the Boy-Who-Lived was fake, Harry didn't feel anything, and Freak was a coward. Once there had been a time where Harry could admit to feeling a lot of everything, but the Boy-Who-Lived was still fake and Freak was still just a scared little coward. So maybe in the end it was always just Harry.

Once, Harry had liked to read, his favorite story about a girl and a little white rabbit. Sometimes he'd dream that he too was falling down a rabbit hole, escaping the problems of every day life. He'd have a tea party with the Mad Hatter and have irritatingly mystifying conversations with the Cheshire Cat and still be happy about it because at least he wasn't with the Dursley's anymore. Harry might have considered himself a dreamer, but he had also considered himself a realist, and as a realist he recognized the fact that dreams never lasted very long. Harry was not Alice, he did not blindly chase rabbits down rabbit holes because he knew that someday _somehow_ , the rabbit would eventually turn on him and swallow him whole.

Harry made friends with a proud grass snake named Phaya.  
No good dream lasts forever.

"Hey Freak!" Dudley's slurred voice calls out to him. Harry glances up and eyes the approaching group warily.

"I've got a gift for you," Dudley continues, his hands hidden behind his back.

 _Run_.

"I think you'll like this one honest! Look, I chopped it up into pieces for you."

 _It..?_

"It struggled, but we got it in the end. Didn't even try that hard, probably glad to be put out of it's misery. It's probably even happy, now it no longer has to deal with you," Dudley says and in his hands lay the mutilated corpse of Phaya the once proud grass snake. _No no no no no no no_ -

"Ha! Is he crying?! How sad, was the snake your best friend? How stupid? It probably didn't even like you!"

 _No no no no Phaya can't be dead because because because—how did he even-  
_ "I followed you, you know. Saw you hissing at it, you sick freak."

It was his fault. Phaya was gone and it was **his** fault. Phaya was all he had all he- no no no she can't be gone, she _**can't can't can't**_ —but she's right there ( _unmoving, lifeless, bl e e ding_ ) right there in front of him and w _hy why **why**_ -

Dudley laughs and it _hurts_. His heart clenches in a tight, painful _squeezing_ grip. **I have nothing I have nothing I have nothing** , Phaya was everything and now there's nothing. So why why why is he still feeling **_everything_**.

 _Phaya is a proud grass snake who scares the other snakes away with her annoyingness. She is arrogant and she is probably the closest thing to an egomania that Harry has ever met. Phaya adopted Harry, dubbed him_ _her_ _human, and didn't really hate it when Harry called her his. Harry is the Boy-Who-Lived, no good thing comes from those who interact with him. Had Phaya known the consequences of connecting to the Boy-Who-Lived-to-Suffer she would verbally agree that she should have stayed away. Had she known the consequences of bonding with the Boy-Who-Lived-to-Be-Hurt she knows she probably wouldn't have changed a thing. Phaya is a grass snake who looks down on everyone because she believes herself better than them. She is sometimes a hypocrite, and often times a bitch, but no one can say she wasn't a good friend._

 **No good dream lasts forever.  
** Harry laughs between his tears.

"What a freak."

He shouldn't be surprised, he should have expected this to happen. He had arrogantly believed that he was smart enough to protect himself from these feelings, but here he was being pulled under the tide again, suffocating on the feeling of feeling everything and having nothing. Chest tight, eyes stinging, he's danced to this tune before, but this time it wasn't quite the same.

 _These feelings are useless.  
_ _I'd rather feel nothing at all._

Harry is eight years old when he first stops feeling.

* * *

 **A/N** :: Yeah, yeah I am starting a new story when I shouldn't, fuck me plot bunnies suck ass - and I have a whole _fucking_ bag of them. Honestly I wasn't going to post this until I had _at least_ half of chapter two done, but I got so excited when I finished this chapter that I decided to post it anyways. I just wanted to point out that I have this really bad, mildly annoying habit of hopping around with the present and past tense in my writings so I apologize ahead of time if that annoys you, but hhhh idon'twanttogobackandchangeitsosorrypleasedon'ttellmynonexistentcreativewritingteacher. English is hard, grammar sucks.

 **Though this story is currently my main priority, expect sporadic updates, if any at all. I've never had a very long attention span.**

* * *

 **Harry Potter - J.K. Rowlings**


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